Listen to John Kerry’s speech on the comatose Middle East “peace process,” or follow the serial condemnations against Israel at the United Nations, including the latest Security Council resolution 2334, and you’d think that the biggest sin in the world is that Jews build too much. They build too many houses, too many schools, too many synagogues, too many hospitals, too many roads.

Think about that. The biggest problem with the Jews is not that they go on terror rampages that murder thousands of innocents, or that they jail poets, hang gays or stone women. No, it’s that they build too much.

But there was a problem. The United Nations, that same anti-Israel haven that once declared that “Zionism is racism,” decided that these liberated areas were “Occupied Palestinian Territory” and that any Jewish construction in these areas, including at the Western Wall, was a “flagrant violation of international law.”

You’d never know any of this from hearing Kerry tell the world that these Jewish settlements are such a pernicious “threat” to peace because they’re taking up space for a Palestinian state. What he failed to mention, as most people do, is that there already is a Palestinian state—it’s called Gaza, and it’s run by religious anti-Semitic madmen sworn to destroy the Zionist state. more at Jewish Journal.

Elor Azaria made an error in judgement, there is no doubt about it, but the judges failed to see before their eyes a young soldier who was sent on a difficult mission in an impossible reality. Not a single word of compassion was heard from the panel of judges at the military court in Tel Aviv towards IDF soldier Elor Azaria or towards his family throughout the entire reading of the verdict. If they had even the slightest sensitivity, they would not have stood there and read the ruling for two and a half hours, without providing the bottom line at the very beginning: Guilty. Reading 309 clauses of the ruling while keeping the soldier in terrible suspense symbolizes the court’s humiliating attitude.

The judges did not see before their eyes a young soldier who was sent on a difficult mission in an impossible reality. They did not see a shocked soldier attending to his wounded friend, who was in a state of deep fear several minutes earlier. How could this panel express any solidarity or empathy, if most of its members never experienced a combat situation?

And that is the essence of the injustice: Retroactively judging—inside a protected and air-conditioned courtroom—something that happened in a chaotic reality, while turning their backs on a person who was sent to the battlefield to defend us all. More at yNet.

A pardon for Azaria would go some way toward repairing the damage the General Staff has done to its relationship with the public By CAROLINE B. GLICK.Sgt. Elor Azaria, who was convicted of manslaughter Wednesday for shooting a terrorist in Hebron last March, is a symptom of what may be the most dangerous threat to Israeli society today.

Azaria, a combat medic from the Kfir Brigade, arrived at the scene of an attack where two terrorists had just stabbed his comrades. One of the terrorists was killed, the other was wounded and lying on the ground, his knife less than a meter away from him.

A cameraman from the foreign-funded, Israeli- registered anti-Israel pressure group B’Tselem filmed Azaria removing his helmet and shooting the wounded terrorist. According to the military judges, the film was the centerpiece of the case against him.

The day of the incident, the General Staff reacted to the B’Tselem film with utter hysteria. Led by Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot and then-defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s generals competed to see who could condemn Azaria most harshly.

For the public, though, the issue wasn’t so cut and dry. Certainly Azaria didn’t act like a model soldier. It was clear, for instance, that he acted without proper authority and that his action was not permitted under the rules of engagement then in effect in Hebron.

But unlike the IDF’s senior leadership, the public believed that the fact that it was B’Tselem that produced the film meant that it had to be viewed with a grain of salt. More at Jpost.

The American psychologist, James E. Mitchell, who crafted the interrogation program that helped stop terrorist attacks and saved countless lives after 9/11, just published a book, Enhanced Interrogation.

In it, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) is quoted as saying that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as it had to the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut — the United States “turned tail and ran.” In the end, KSM told Mitchell:

“We will win because Americans don’t realize… we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting. … Eventually, America will expose her neck for us to slaughter.”

That is exactly why Islamists are trying to hit the West’s soft underbelly: the office of the magazine, Charlie Hebdo, restaurants and theaters in Paris, a café in Copenhagen, a promenade in Nice, a church in Normandy and a Christmas market in Berlin. Islamists perfectly understand that the West’s most exposed flank is its home front. The same lifestyle that we defend by words is the main obstacle to the initiative of the defense against Islamists. Islamists have told us in every way, “we love death more than life”, while we in the West love the expectation of life more than life itself. More at GATESTONE.

Last year was no doubt an annus horribilis for Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that 1,178 people were killed between July 2015 and December 2016 in Turkey’s fight with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Bomb attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) claimed another 330 lives. Those numbers exclude 248 people who died during the bloody coup attempt of July 15, as well as 9,500 apparent PKK members who were killed by Turkish security forces. Turkey also claims that it killed 1,800 ISIS members since July 2015. These numbers put the total death toll in Turkey at 13,056, in a span of fewer than 17 months.

Just when most people thought that would be the final death toll for 2016, on December 10, a twin bombing in Istanbul outside a soccer stadium killed at least 38 people, and injured another 136. A week later, a suicide car-bomb in central Turkey killed 13 off-duty soldiers aboard a bus and wounded 56 more.

After so much bloodshed, Turks thought they could now enjoy New Year’s festivities in peace. They were wrong.

About an hour into the New Year, a mysterious man, later identified as a Kyrgyz ISIS terrorist, walked into Reina, a posh nightclub on the Bosporus, took out an assault rifle and started to shoot at the hundreds of guests celebrating the New Year. The assailant killed 39 people and injured 65, changed his clothes, and, pretending to be a customer, walked out of the club. More at GATESTONE.

I didn’t just want anti-gun journalists to better understand the objects of their hatred. I also wanted them (and everyone else) to know how to safely handle a firearm. That’s why the very first of the 14 items in the article was about the four basic rules of gun safety: 1) Treat all guns as though they are loaded, 2) Never point the muzzle at anything you don’t intend to destroy, 3) Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target and you’re prepared to fire, and 4) Always confirm your target, as well as what’s in front, behind, and around it.

Unfortunately, Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold did not read that article. How do we know? Because Fahrenthold had to go to the emergency room after he shot himself in the eye with one of his children’s confetti guns: More at The Federalist.

In yet another act of aggression towards jews and Israel, Al-Aqsa imam and Supreme Muslim Council Head Sheikh Ekrima Sa’id Sabri has threatened that there will be war if President Elect Donald Trump moves the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. During his campaign, Trump repeatedly promised that he would move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, a move that is highly contested. Israel’s enemies respond to strength, and it is an act of strength to declare and recognize Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Jewish people while proving that the United States is in charge, which is why under a Donald Trump presidency, the embassy will likely be moved to Jerusalem.

According to Sabri, Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem is equivalent to declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Sabri responded by urging Muslims in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem to take action. More at Geller Report.